Gardaí organise resistance to reserve force

GARDAÍ will begin organising their opposition to plans for a Garda Reserve at the first of a series of protest meetings next week.

Rank-and-file gardaí as well as sergeants and inspectors from the north-west will attend the first of four regional meetings in the Sligo Park Hotel on Monday evening.

Garda Representative Association president Dermot O’Donnell said: “We will be giving our members as much information as we have up to now - that the Garda Reserve will be virtually untrained, that they will have full police powers and that they will not have to observe the same residential disqualification as qualified gardaí.